This Period of Time is Precious Beyond Measure

Experience Sharing from the 2011 Canada Fa Conference

[PureInsight.org] Three years have passed since our family immigrated to Canada in 2008. In this period of time we have experienced the difficulty of adapting to a new community and have also experienced the difficulty of practicing abroad. I would like introduce my achievements over these 3 years in 4 parts.

1. Participating in Shen Yun promotion

We landed in Guelph in July 2008, and participated in the promotion of Shen Yun in Waterloo the same year. In 2009, we moved to Hamilton and participated with the promotion there for two years. I feel that I have benefited a lot from this process.

Hamilton lacks practitioners, and there are only 6 to 7 practitioners that participate in studying the Fa every week. I am also very busy every day: I work with my wife in our store, which opens from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., purchase items for the store twice a week, and pick up 800 newspapers from Mississauga and deliver them every Friday.

Last October, we made an agreement with a mall for a booth; we were supposed to work there for 10 consecutive days from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. So I suggested to the Shen Yun promotion team leader of our group that either my wife or I could work for the booth from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. every day. I hoped that practitioner A from Hamilton and practitioners from Toronto would be able to cover the afternoons, and I also hoped that practitioner B, who is also from Hamilton and can drive, could set up in the booth in the morning and tear it down in the evening.

But the team leader said it was too early for Toronto practitioners to apply for days off in October. They could do that in December, but for the next two months no one would come from Toronto. We Hamilton practitioners needed to cover the five weekdays by ourselves.

When I called practitioner A, she said she worked at night starting at 8:00 p.m., had to leave by 6:00 p.m., and since the mall was a 30-minute drive from her home, she needed someone to drive her. When I asked practitioner B who can drive, she said her English was not good enough for selling tickets, that she had to work on posters and fliers, and hoped we wouldn’t bother asking her to sell tickets. At that moment I couldn’t believe it, because I knew that we had a contract with the mall, so if no one could go, my wife and I would be the ones who would have to go.

When the team leader asked me over email about the situation, I wrote back telling him not to worry. Even if there was only the two of us, we would cover the booth by ourselves. When I sent that email I felt the world around me shake for a while; I knew something great had happened in other dimensions. Shortly after I sent the email, practitioner A told me she could postpone her work shifts for two days, and she could now cover two afternoons a week. When I called practitioner B, she said that she wanted take back what she had said before, and that she would do whatever was asked of her. I was so moved that I was almost in tears. Finally, we found a senior practitioner that speaks English from Guelph, and arranged for her to cooperate with practitioner B to cover the other three afternoons. My wife set up in the morning and tore down in the evening, so that while she was out she could buy the items for the store and pick up the newspapers. Thus we operated the booth successfully, and tickets were sold every day.

I felt that the work was very difficult that month, but it was just as difficult in November, and almost all of December. By December, 6 booths needed to be serviced in Hamilton, and my wife went out at 9:00 a.m. and came back at 9:00 p.m., it became normal for me to work at the store for 14 hours every day. Cooking dinner for my son became a luxury. During this time I came up with a new way to get sleep. When I felt too sleepy, I asked my son to sit beside me. I sat behind the counter, and would take a nap when there were no customers. When a customer came in my son would wake me up. Even two minutes of sleep would make me refreshed.

There were many xinxing trials during that period of time. Once when I was selling tickets at a booth, I heard the news that my most important supplier had changed its policy—now the cost of certain items at our store would cost much higher than those at other stores nearby. I had only taken over the store for one year, used up all my savings, and was already in a lot of debt. I felt enormous pressure and recited the Fa, Master’s poem “Nothing Kept” from Hong Yin:

“In life, nothing sought,
In death, regretting naught;
Washing away all wrong thought,
Buddhahood, with less
adversity, is wrought.”

I continued to sell tickets at the booth. I felt that life and death tests existed for practitioners outside of China, too. In the end, although our business was affected a little bit, the profit margin of other items actually improved, so overall the difference was not much. Master is looking after everything!

2. Calling people to quit the CCP

I started to persuade people to quit the Chinese Communist Party by phone last September. I was getting more familiar with the store, so after work at 10:00 p.m., I had some time available. Sometimes I slept at the store to save 1 hour to make a phone call.

When Shen Yun promotion got busy, I stopped making phone calls for a while, but picked it up again after the show. At first I got up at 5:00 a.m. and after sending righteous thoughts at 6:00 a.m., I could make phone calls for an hour. After my wife attended a meeting on a phone calling project, I decided to attend the next meeting. Seeing a practitioner from Montreal making phone calls at a store, I was moved greatly. I contacted her immediately to learn how to do it.

Therefore, I began to make phone calls at our store. I arrive at the store at 7:30 a.m. every day, and after half an hour of setting up the store, I can make phone calls from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. I have benefited a lot from the phone calling project. Practitioners make phone calls with you one by one, and after the calls, tell you your shortcomings frankly. I learned to speak more naturally, freely, and to quickly get to the point about quitting the CCP. I also enlightened that I should send righteous thoughts when making a call, because in fact all the human beings are eager to be saved, but their notions and the evil are hindering them from being saved.

Sometimes when I send righteous thoughts, I can see an area of brightness in front of me. I feel improvement every day. Since I work long hours at the store, I have a lot of free time. Now that I make phone calls, my time is completely occupied. I also study the Fa and need do the actual work in the store, so this leaves me less time to indulge in attachments.

Seeing practitioners freely convince people to quit the CCP, sometimes getting 10-30 people to quit every day, I am aware of the gap in my cultivation, and want to work hard to narrow it. Since this project is saving people from the evil directly, it requires a high degree of righteous thoughts; if we are not calm when studying Fa and doing the exercises, what we say will not have any strength. So I tell myself to watch my every thought, and now I feel calmer than before. Master said in “Teaching the Fa at the Conference in New Zealand,”

“if a piece of sawdust or a wood chip is dropped into a furnace of molten steel, instantly you won’t see even a trace of it. A person is like that wood chip, and this Dafa of the cosmos is like that furnace of molten steel. To assimilate a person, to assimilate one person, is just so easy.”

During that period time I was very excited, and felt that I found a suitable method for me to clarify the truth. Eagerly I shared my feeling with other practitioners. I called one senior practitioner in Waterloo and a practitioner in Hamilton. They had not been doing well lately, yet I knew that they were very good practitioners. After discussion, we understood that this period of time was not for eliminating karma, it was time help Master to rectify the Fa, and that we should not acknowledge the persecution. They both said that Master must have arranged for me to call them. The next day, the Waterloo practitioner made phone calls from 7:00 to 10:00 a.m., and convinced four people to quit the CCP. When I talked to her two days later, she sounded much better. Soon after, the Hamilton practitioner also joined the phone calling project.

I think that if more practitioners picked up the phone, and since we have millions of practitioners, if each could convince 8 or 10 people to quit the party, it wouldn’t take too long time before all of them would quit. Practitioners in China are working so hard, I can feel the immense change in the cosmic climate. More and more practitioners are picking up the phone now, and they say that people are accepting better than before, and many people want to quit when receiving the call. We really need to make good use of the time, as it passes so quickly.

3. Memorizing the Fa

I began to study the Fa in September 1998. When I went to Beijing to appeal to the government in 2000; I had basically memorized Zhuan Falun. Throughout the years I have studied the Fa by reciting. Now I ask myself to recite one lecture in the morning at 5:00 a.m., one lecture at lunch break, and one lecture after work. I also read half an hour to one hour of Master’s new scriptures in the afternoon. Reciting the Fa is like the meditation-- sometime when I recite the Fa, I can feel that I am looking over Hamilton at the houses below, and just feel so far from the mundane world. Many attachments and ordinary thoughts have been eliminated from reciting the Fa.

Since the Fa is different from any other book, it is very easy to forget. Maybe it is separated from us in other dimensions, so it needs to be memorized again and again.

My ten year old son has also started to memorize the Fa, 4 pages every day, and as of now he has finished Zhuan Falun twice.

4. Joining Fa-rectification overseas

Before I came to Canada at 34 years of age, our situation was not bad in China. I was the technical manager of a provincial product inspection center, and my wife was a teacher at a university. In 2008, after the evil harassed us at our home before the Olympic Games, our family immigrated to Canada. I then worked for more than half a year at a factory, and because my field is rare, I could not find a suitable college to study at, nor could I find an appropriate job. With the help of relatives and friends, we bought a store in a town near Hamilton, and have made a living there.

When buying the store, I invested all of my money and borrowed a lot of funds, and the amount of work I’ve had to put into the store has taken long hours. Seeing many practitioners having so much time to work on validating the Fa, I feel embarrassed.

By late November 2009, two months after starting the business, my wife could work at the store by herself. Since we were the only two practitioners in Hamilton who could drive at the time, I cooperated with another practitioner to apply for a booth for Shen Yun promotion. Her language skills were good but she could not drive. With our efforts and the help of practitioners from Toronto, we got 11 booths at the end of November, which served as a very good base for the promotion of that year. My wife and I were in charge of one booth, and my store also became one of the booths.

After Shen Yun came in early 2010, I started to translate articles for The Epoch Times in the afternoon; now I have done this for more than a year. After being familiar with the work of the store, I arranged to work 10 hours at the store and let my wife do more work for Dafa. During the promotion of Shen Yun last year, during the weekdays I would let my wife go, she even helped to sell tickets in Waterloo for several days. Other days she would go out for posters and fliers. I only went to sell tickets on the weekends. Since we have the space at home and have a car, three practitioners ended up living at my home. Sometimes I think: some people need to stand as the base or foundation, so that others can stand on them to carry out their tasks. Perhaps my role is the base.

With the debt decreasing, and work getting easier, and especially after we joined the phone calling project, I feel the road of cultivation getting wider and wider. My wife even went to Chicago in April to distribute fliers and send righteous thoughts for Shen Yun. Those two days I needed to work 14 hours at the store, and at the same time look after my son. After I make phone calls at the store, I feel very happy. The best time to make calls is in the morning when people in China are home from work, and I can work on translations in the afternoon. Hamilton has more than 800,000 people, and there are only us few practitioners. I think that is why I was arranged to be here. Whatever the case, what Master arranges is the best. Master said in “Teaching the Fa at the 2004 Chicago Conference,”

“Today, what I'm telling Dafa disciples to do is to cultivate among ordinary people in a way that conforms to ordinary people as much as possible. You can't go to extremes. Just go about things steadily like that and fully play the role of a Dafa disciple as you validate the Fa. You have many, many challenges; in addition to doing well in things to validate Dafa, in this world you also need to maintain relationships with other people, with your family, and in society. It is hard. It's hard, but that is the path that a Dafa disciple must take.”

After such a long period of cultivation, every practitioner has experienced many stories of joys and tears. Everyone is writing their history in the universe, at this moment that is precious beyond measure. I would like to read a paragraph of the Fa from the article, “In Fa-Rectification Your Thoughts Have to be Righteous, Not Human” to remind all of us:

“Snap out of it! If even this, the most wicked ordeal ever, can't wake you up, then when the Fa rectifies the human world you will only be able to watch--watch with shock and regret, with angst and lamentful despair for having done so poorly--the magnificent sight of the Consummation of those Dafa disciples who truly cultivated. It's a case of reaping what you sow. I don't want to leave behind even one single Dafa disciple, but you have got to improve yourselves through real Fa-study and cultivation! With validating the Fa, you should save the world's people and do well the three things Dafa disciples are supposed to do. Be diligent! Cast aside your human attachments. Godhood isn't far away.”

Thank you Master! Thank you everyone!